An important Big 12 matchup kicks off under the lights as No. 16 Utah goes on the road against Arizona State in college football’s Week 7 action on Friday night. Let’s check in with the latest prediction for the game from an expert model that picks winners.

Utah was expected to be a contender for the Big 12 championship and thus a spot in the College Football Playoff, if not the outright favorite in the expanded conference, but is just 1-1 in league play so far and hoping to get quarterback Cameron Rising back from a hand injury.

Arizona State looks like one of college football’s most improved teams. After finishing at or near the bottom of most preseason Big 12 projections, the Sun Devils are 4-1 overall but have lost four straight against the Utes in this series, including a 55-3 rout on the road a year ago.

What can we make of this Big 12 matchup on Friday night?

For that, let’s turn to the SP+ prediction model to get a preview of how Utah and Arizona State compare in this Week 7 college football game.

As expected, the simulations currently favor the Utes, but by a close margin.

SP+ predicts that Utah will defeat Arizona State by a projected score of 28 to 22 and will win the game by an expected 6.5 point margin.

The model gives the Utes a 66 percent chance of outright victory.

SP+ is a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency” that attempts to predict game outcomes by measuring “the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football.”

How good is it this season? So far, the SP+ model is 154-141-3 against the spread with a 52.2 win percentage.

Utah is a 5.5 point favorite against Arizona State, according to the lines at FanDuel Sportsbook.

FanDuel lists the total at 46.5 points for the game.

And it set the moneyline odds for Utah at -225 and for Arizona State at +190 to win outright.

If you’re using this prediction to bet on the game, you should take …

Bettors are almost evenly divided on how the game will turn out, according to the latest spread consensus picks.

A slight majority of bets — 52 percent — expect Utah will win the game and cover the spread.

The remaining 48 percent of wagers project that Arizona State will either win the game in an upset or keep the score within the line.

Most analytical models also favor the Utes over the Sun Devils in this road game.

That includes the College Football Power Index, a computer prediction model that uses data points from both teams to simulate games 20,000 times to pick winners.

Utah is projected to win outright in a majority 51.5 percent of the FPI computer’s most recent simulations of the game.

That leaves Arizona State as the expected winner in the remaining 48.5 percent of sims.

Utah is projected to be just 0.4 points better than Arizona State on the same field in both teams’ current composition, according to the model’s latest forecast.

Utah is seventh among Big 12 teams with a 4 percent chance to qualify for the College Football Playoff and will win 7.6 games this season, according to the FPI’s metrics.

That model gives Arizona State a win total projection of 7.1 games and a 1.9 percent shot at the 12-team playoff.

When: Fri., Oct. 11
Time: 8:30 p.m. Mountain
TV: ESPN network

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Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.

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